Saturday, December 17, 2016

(This will be a brief post because it's late and there are Christmas cookies to be made for small children to decorate tomorrow, and soup and bread to be prepped for a wintery dinner. I hope that you have the opportunity to be enjoying winter with family and friends, and that you enjoy the solstice as much as we do!)

There has been some amazing recent coverage about what is happening in East Liberty and the new plans for Penn Plaza and Enright Park.This piece in the Huffington Post (originally published via Medium - please remember that the Huff Po doesn't pay contributors, so, if you can, send a few dollars towards Caitlyn so that she can keep up the work!) There's a minute of video of the amazing and fearless Jacquea Mae of 1Hood in the post; more live video on Facebook if you care to search too.

To quote the article "It’s important to show up to meetings like this if you can, it’s
important to be ugly and unapologetic, it’s important to speak and keep
speaking, and be angry, because if we are not angry then, to paraphrase
Zora Neale Hurston, people will take everything away and say that you
agreed."

This has been our experience time and time again with this project. Meetings are held and there is no action taken on any of the dialogue, yet the developers claim credit for just having shown up to begin with. We are done with that. Stay tuned. As we have said before, the park is an issue because it keeps us in the game, but it is not the whole game by far. An equitable East Liberty is the end game.

But I want to bring people's attention mostly to here, a 2005 piece in the Post-Gazette, just after the towers started coming down on Penn Circle. It's striking as it seems clear that we are destined to relive our mistakes and our lessons unlearned from history.

Thursday, December 15, 2016

Thank you to everyone who showed up at the community meeting Monday night at East Liberty Presbyterian Church and at the Planning Commission on Tuesday Downtown. Thank you also to all the people who submitted comment to the Planning Commission even if they could not attend the meeting.

There was nearly three hours of testimony on the project, both for and against. By the time the testimony wrapped up just after 6 pm, the Commission hadn't had a chance to consider any of the submitted comment, and took a 5 minute break. When they reconvened, they unanimously voted to continue the hearing to the New Year, which means that they will discuss and then take a vote at that time.

This hearing is likely to be the January 10th, 2017 hearing, but could possibly be later in the month. We will keep you posted. There will NOT be more public testimony at that time, but we do recommend that if you have not been able to yet submit comment, please send it to: dolores.hanna@pittsburghpa.gov.

There are several articles about the hearing and the issues at stake. These include:

Here is also a link to the statement issued by the coalition of neighborhood groups that have been opposing this development. This coalition includes Enright Park Neighborhood Association, the Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation, and the Friendship Community Group.

If anything, the meetings this week displayed the need for more work to happen together between the different interests. We have been saying it since the start, but healthy communities are predicated on on opportunity for all. Opportunity for housing, opportunity for
education, opportunity for jobs, opportunity for open space. It is
critical that we keep in mind how all of these issues intersect and that
we continue to work together.

Keeping the park in the conversation is a way of having influence over the overall development. If this project were only happening on private property, we would have little opportunity for influence. However, because the developer wants to use and reconfigure public park space to serve their needs, we, the public, have greater voice and greater opportunity to influence the outcome.

Here are some diagrams (bigger versions if you click on them) that may be useful to you
in understanding what the developer is proposing to do. They have already
demolished one of the Penn Plaza buildings. You can see how huge the site is if
you walk by. This is the “Phase One” site.

diagram of the proposed site plan with annotations added by enrightpark.org for clarity

Key points about Phase One (the site where
demolition of Penn Plaza has already occurred):

50,000 square feet for a new Whole Foods
(roughly double the existing store).

About 12,000 square feet of office space above.

582 parking spaces in a 3 story parking a garage,
accessed from South Euclid (Penn Circle West) and a new street that cuts across
the park from South Negley. This street is currently unnamed, but sometimes
referred to as “Eva Street” in the developer’s documents, but it is NOT the
existing Eva Street.

200 units of “market-rate” apartments.

None of these units will be affordable housing.

The new building is essentially the ENTIRE site
that you can see cleared right now. There are no setbacks planned, except for
immediately adjacent to the townhouses on S. Euclid and Topaz Way.

Key points about Phase Two (the site where 5600
Penn Avenue is still standing):

This will also be a “mixed-use” building
program, meaning some mix of commercial, retail, and residential uses.

There will be another significant parking garage
attached to it. We have heard up to another 600 parking spaces.

There will not be any affordable housing in this
phase either.

diagram showing park as it exists today: everything in red will be demolished for development.

Key points about the park:

They are reconfiguring the park in order to use
the northern-most third of the park for their development, to provide car
access to Whole Foods.

They are destroying 17 of the trees, including
at least 14 that were planted in the 1964 park design, when the park was formed
to address the “urban blight” of East Liberty. Most of these trees are very
tall and healthy pin oaks, which contribute significant environmental benefit
to a neighborhood that is sorely lacking in green space. You can read moreabout the benefit of these trees in the report that Tree Pittsburgh did a few
years ago when they were helping the City of Pittsburgh identify the places and
resources that needed investment in their park system.

The reconfigured park will be very different in
shape – a long and skinny leg out to Negley Avenue will need to also address a
hill.

There is not yet (as of this writing) a
financial commitment from either the developer or the City to pay for a
redesign and rebuilding of the park.

diagram of what a "reconfigured" park could look like

Key points about the neighborhood:

We are still trying to find a way to get
affordable housing back into this site. We, the neighbors, have proposed
different approaches and we hope that our partners at the City and East Liberty
Development, Inc., will find a way to make something work. It will never
replace all of the units lost, but if we can find a way to make sure that
there are safe, affordable, accessible, and convenient apartments for some of
our neighbors who desperately need and want to be part of this community, we
will do everything that it takes.

There has been a small working group of
residents who have been meeting regularly with the developer since the end of
August, trying to negotiate a solution. We have put several proposals before
them and have been rejected. We are still waiting to hear on our most
recent one.

There have NOT been any open public meetings on
this project since the City Council hearing in April, and before that there
were two meetings to discuss the park only. Monday, December 12 from 6-8 pm
will be the first time that the developer or the City have come out to talk to
a broad cross-section of the neighborhood about the concerns for the
development overall. This meeting will
be held at East Liberty Presbyterian Church, 116 South Highland Avenue.

It sounds like all we talk about is the park, but the reality is that the park is only our point of entry into the conversation. We, the near neighbors, have been shut out of the discussion of whether there can or should be affordable housing on this site, which we believe is critical to a healthy East Liberty for all. The developer has refused to discuss this with us. And we clearly have little leverage to make it happen.

What we do have is a critical PUBLIC resource (the park), that the developer wants to use to enhance their development project, but on their own terms. We have been trying to leverage this resource to make some degree of change to the proposed development.

And, finally, a few words about Whole Foods.

We've heard a lot of murmurings about whether Whole Foods has a responsibility to the community. And a lot of, frankly, glee from people who want a better parking scenario, and who like to say "well it's not like Whole Foods evicted everyone..." and "...well at least it's not Walmart, now THAT would be horrible..." So here are a few facts for you to consider.

The architects on this project, MV+A Architects out of Washington DC, have designed upwards of 100 Whole Foods across the country, including the recent Wexford and South Hills stores.

MV+A Architects have been working on this project for over two years now (fall of 2014), according to the comments made at Planning Commission both last week and last October.

The Penn Plaza tenants received their initial eviction notices in June 2015.

Whole Foods announced that they would be the anchor tenant in August 2016 after a year of the developer dancing around the question.

Which means that MV+A Architects and Whole Foods started working on this project nearly 9 months before residents were evicted. Which means that they knew full well what they were signing on for.

Up until winter of 2015/2016, Whole Foods was an active and engaged partner on the Enright Park Community Garden, having founded it with our neighborhood group and the Kentucky Avenue School 8 or so years ago. They provided both financial and staff support for the garden, and were active in talking about how they wanted Whole Foods to be part of the community. This past summer, we were notified that they would no longer be involved in the operation of the garden.

Many of the Penn Plaza residents and other East Liberty community members are, in fact, regular customers at Whole Foods. For all its reputation as "Whole Paycheck", it is, actually, possible to shop there (if you avoid the fancy cheese) and come out with a grocery bill that is the same or less than at Giant Eagle, and be buying organics or gluten-free options or other foods that are specific to dietary wants or needs. We are all entitled to make choices about the kinds of food that we eat.

And, finally, up until a few years ago, Whole Foods used to like to tout the fact that the East Liberty store had one of the highest uses of food stamps/EBT cards in the entire chain, across the country. If I remember correctly, it was along the lines of 10% of their total sales that were paid in EBT benefits. They felt that this indicated that they were contributing to the community in a positive way, and that it showed that they were not purely a gentrifying force.

So you be the judge of where you want your dollars to go.

Submitting Comments to Planning Commission

If you are looking to submit comments to
Planning Commission, you can attend the public hearing on Tuesday, December 13 beginning
at 2 pm, located at 200 Ross Street (first floor), Pittsburgh, 15219. If you
cannot attend the meeting, but still wish to send comments, you can send them
via e-mail to:

Dolores.hanna@pittsburghpa.govsubject line: Planning Commission Pennley Place South hearing. Be sure to send
them by 12 noon the day of the hearing, and earlier if possible.

Tips for submitting to or speaking at Planning Commission:

Open with a short statement of why you are
writing. E.g. “I am writing in opposition to the Preliminary Land Development
Plan” or “I am writing in support of the PLDP” or “I am writing to ask you to
consider specific issues in your review of the PLDP”. If you are speaking, you will have three
minutes. Try to make a clear argument, rooted in fact, about why you are making
the case that you are making. Be honest, and don’t be accusatory if you
disagree with someone. Be passionate. The Planning Commission can take the following
actions on Tuesday:

They can vote to APPROVE the PLDP.

They can vote to REJECT the PLDP.

They can vote to APPROVE the PLDP WITH
CONDITIONS (e.g. Approved, but with the condition that the developer make all the
buildings blue. [that’s a joke. More realistically, they would approve with the
condition that the developer provide an additional setback, or provide more
information to City staff for review about the street circulation. But they
COULD add a condition about the color of the buildings if they really wanted to…])

They can move to TABLE the decision, pending
further information or additional community process.

Your statement or e-mail can provide support for
any one of these actions.

Frankly, it is highly doubtful that they will
reject it outright. If there is a lot of opposition to the plan, a more likely
scenario would be to table the decision and direct the developer to work with
the City and community to address the major concerns. Or to approve it with
conditions if it seems that the concerns can be addressed in this manner.

Final Notes.

We frankly don't yet know what the statement from Enright Park Neighborhood Association will be yet on Tuesday. While we certainly do not endorse the development as it stands, we don't necessarily believe that outright opposition, as tempting as it may be, is the most productive answer. Instead, we will continue to review with the same concerns that we stated at the onset of the project in mind:

The importance of
advancing an inclusive community vision, and one which promotes a diversity of
income, age, gender, and race as the heart of a healthy neighborhood

Ensuring that the
highest quality public space, and particularly that of the park, is maintained
and developed with the broader East Liberty community in mind

Ensuring that the
development is compatible with the existing community, both in terms of the
built environment of the neighborhood and the shared vision/values of the
community

Ensuring that changes to
vehicular traffic patterns, pedestrian and bicycle circulation, and transit
systems associated with the development are made through innovative and
thoughtful solutions that advance strategies to enhance community connectivity
and mobility in all forms

Further, as a community, we remain
deeply committed to a vision for this site that brings with it affordable
housing, not simply in the form of funds to be distributed elsewhere, but a
commitment to a vision for East Liberty that provides equitable access to
housing that is located near resources and opportunity. Concentrations of
wealth can be just as detrimental to the community fabric as concentrations of
poverty. The value of the Penn Plaza site to the community is that it has the
potential to provide access to resources, including transit, groceries, and
social amenities, to our community members who are most in need of connection
and stability. Affordable housing on this site would be a significant benefit
to many of our community members, including seniors and those living with
disabilities.

We continue to advocate
for a portion of the new housing to be allocated for affordable units. Thank you for being part of this and being part of East Liberty's future.

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

It's a short report because it was a LONG briefing. More details to come, but we wanted to share with everyone the images that were made public. In the meantime, you can read Tim Schooley's article in the Pittsburgh Business Times here.

View of proposed Whole Foods from Penn Avenue at new South Saint Clair Street

Monday, November 28, 2016

There will be a Briefing at the Planning Commission tomorrow, Tuesday, November 29, 2016 at 1 pm at 200 Ross Street, First Floor, Pittsburgh, PA 15219 on the proposed redevelopment of Penn Plaza and Enright Park to become a mixed-use development by LG Realty.

A briefing is a meeting that is not on the official record of Planning Commission. It is used to inform and update the Commission members about projects that will be presented to them for hearing and action in 2 weeks. There is not public testimony at these hearings, but the public may attend to hear about the projects. Planning Commission members may ask questions at briefings.

At the briefing tomorrow, the developer's team will be presenting how they propose to transform Penn Plaza and the adjacent park into a new mixed use development, including a new 50,000 square foot Whole Foods, additional retail and restaurants, office, parking garages, and up to 300 units of "market-rate" residential apartments. They will also include a presentation of how they propose to reconfigure the publicly owned park to support their development.

A working group of community members, including residents, and design and planning professionals in the neighborhood, has been meeting the past 6 weeks with the developer to review their plans and proposal. We have also come up with an alternate proposal, which we believe will support a neighborhood vision that will benefit the entire East Liberty community, including a recommendation for how to develop affordable housing on the site. The developer has not yet responded to that proposal.

A few key points that you need to know:

The developer had not backed off their proposal to destroy upwards of 15 of the mature established trees in the park. The working group has fought long and hard to preserve these trees, but in our counter-proposal to LG Realty, we are prepared to concede the loss of the trees in lieu of getting an appropriately scaled park.

The developer proposes to meet the 2.2 acre park requirement by closing most of Eva Street and dedicating it to the park. The working group has stated that this is unacceptable, and has countered that they must adjust their new access street location to make up for the reduced park size.

The developer has not yet held a community meeting to present their
proposals to the neighborhood at large, which is part of the requirement
of the PLDP process. While a small group has been meeting with them intermittently, they have not shared their plans with the larger community. The working group is sharing what information we are able. If you have questions, please reach out directly to enright.park@gmail.com.

We will need you to come out and add your voice to the conversation at Planning Commission in 2 weeks. We are hopeful that there will be positive motion and that the developer will accept our proposal for how to move forward. And if that happens, we need community support for the vision for a public park and affordable housing in the heart of our neighborhood. And if they do not accept the proposal, we will need your support to help lobby the City why approval should be conditioned upon acceptance of the community proposal.

Sunday, October 23, 2016

Join
neighbors, community members, and garden enthusiasts for a fall
clean-up and planning session on Sunday, November 6 from 10 am to 2 pm.
Bring your own lunch, but drinks and dessert will be provided!

Our
park and our garden are undergoing major transformation! As you may
know, the owner of Penn Plaza (the affordable housing near the park) has announced
and initiated plans to demolish the housing and build a new Whole Foods,
with market-rate housing and office space above. In addition to the loss of over 200 units of affordable housing, which has displaced many long-term East Liberty residents and community members, the project includes reconfiguration of the public park and major impacts on the adjacent residential neighborhood.

At
the same time, Whole Foods, which has been a partner and major supporter of the garden for the past 8 years, is refocusing their
efforts and will no longer provide garden management and support.

It's
time for us to reinvent ourselves as a communal garden for East Liberty, and to define the future
of our public park!

(Fortunately, East Liberty Development Inc. owns the
garden site and supports the community's efforts to shape its future.)

So
please join us to put the garden to sleep for the winter, plan for its
future, and participate in the conversation about what is happening at
Enright Park and in East Liberty as a whole!

For those who are not total zoning nerds (or former City Planning interns):

The Preliminary Land Development Plan (PLDP) is the technical
document required under the City of Pittsburgh Zoning Code for large
development areas. The PLDP establishes a set of requirements for
accomplishing the Vision of the project and the conditions outlined in
the Special Plan District (SPD) zoning. The PLDP includes sections
identified as Regulating Plans which describe the requirements for
streets, blocks, buildings and Open Spaces. The PLDP also includes the
requirements and goals for the sustainable development of the site and
the design standards for private and public right of way improvements.

When a specific project is identified within the SPD district a Final
Land Development Plan (FLDP) submission is prepared for public input
and approval by the Planning Commission. The FLDP provides specific
information about the building or project and identifies materials, uses
and related information such as parking and signage. The FLDP must be
consistent with and conforming to the SPD and PLDP.

We actually received a copy for review a couple of weeks ago, but I was not sure if it was intended for public circulation and was able to confirm today that it is now a public document.

I will be publishing our initial comments on the document in the next couple of days. Still working on a few points. There is additional information that needs to be provided - the list of proposed uses, square footages, traffic study, parking numbers, etc. Most of what is here is focused on the physical form and envelope of the development - e.g. what are the maximums that they are asking to be able to build.

Please review and send us YOUR comments as well. We want to compile them on an on-going basis and incorporate them into the community commentary. You can e-mail comments to: info@enrightpark.org.

Friday, August 19, 2016

It has been very quiet this summer on the blog and social media in general. Part of this is because little has been happening that we are aware of, part because summer tends to take its toll on schedules, and part of it is because we were all so damned tired from the previous eight plus months of being in the midst of this process on top of our other commitments - full time jobs, spouses, children, extended family, other volunteer work, etc.

Now that the anchor tenant has been announced, we understand that the developer will be looking to apply for approvals this fall. We will be sharing plans as they become available publicly, and we are developing our concerns and how to get answers. We encourage you to reach out and submit your concerns and questions. Please e-mail us at: enright.park@gmail.com. We can't promise you a speedy response (see jobs, family. etc above), but we will look to compile the commentary that we receive to include in the community feedback.

We have three key points that we want to move forward:

Incorporate affordable housing into the former Penn Plaza site that can be inclusive of the East Liberty/East End community, and which promotes a diversity of income, age, gender, and race as the heart of a healthy community

Ensure that the highest quality public space is maintained and developed with the East Liberty community in mind

Ensure that the development is compatible with the existing community, both in terms of the built environment of the community and the shared vision/values of the community

Over the course of the next few weeks, we will be using this blog to explore how we believe that each of these goals can be advanced through design and advocacy, and why they are so very very important to establishing the future of East Liberty.

Residents of Enright Park have been speculating about this behind the scenes since October as there were many clues on the table:

MVA Architects, the team hired by LG Realty for the site planning, worked on the original expansion plans for Whole Foods at the Eastside development. It seemed odd that an out of town firm would be brought in without good reason, so when we saw this on on their website, we got suspicious.

We knew that Whole Foods wanted at least 40,000 square feet (articles indicate new one will be 50,000sf!), when the current store is roughly 20,000, and that the expansion plans were being delayed due to the complexity of expanding at the same time that they operate the Eastside store. And they had a very limited window for the expansion (essentially February to September in order to not disrupt their "high" season that kicks off from October and runs until after New Years). So the idea of being able to build a brand new store without disrupting operations in one of their highest grossing stores in the Mid-Atlantic region would be appealing.

LG Realty's lawyer repeatedly told community members that if we "only knew" who the anchor tenant was going to be, we "would be so excited" that we would stop our protest against the sale and destruction of the public park, and that we would be thrilled that our property values were going to go up. Clearly, he doesn't know our community.

We did also hear from LG Realty at some point that there was a grocery anchor as part of it, and, given the plethora of options in the community, who would want to build in the shadow of Whole Foods except another Whole Foods?

And, finally, developers are so competitive with each other, what a better feather in a developer's cap than to snatch a plum tenant like Whole Foods away from another developer?

[ETA: Everyone we asked about the idea that it could be Whole Foods either denied it or denied knowledge of it, although it certainly seemed plausible to most. There were also lots of public rumors about it being Walmart or Costco, and MV+A has also been known for doing urban Walmarts...]

It will be an interesting conversation now that the news is public. Historically, Whole Foods has been a supportive community partner to our neighborhood. However, 15 years ago they were building on a vacant taxi dispatch and parking lots. They weren't encroaching on affordable housing and a public park. Two-hundred low income households had not been displaced from their community by the developer. The community wasn't at risk of losing one of only a few green public spaces in the community, open and accessible to ALL without a price of entry, including majestic established oak trees, community basketball courts, and shady lawns*. The community wasn't yet feeling that we were in siege mentality against the waves of development that have since been rolling down Penn Avenue.

It's going to be interesting.

*Theoretically, the park has some protection via the zoning legislation that was passed this spring, but it is proposed to be redesigned, reconfigured, and it will certainly undergo significant changes with a major development adjacent to it. Designs forthcoming...

About Enright Park

Enright Park Neighborhood Association is comprised of homeowners, renters, public housing residents, and landlords who live in close proximity to Enright Parklet in Pittsburgh's East Liberty neighborhood.

In recent years, we have seen a dramatic transformation of our community, which has resulted in the on-going displacement of our friends and neighbors. This displacement has disproportionately impacted people of color, seniors living on fixed incomes, low-income working families, and the many ways in which these groups intersect.

The Enright Park Neighborhood Association was established to advance the joint causes of affordable housing, public open space, and an inclusive approach to planning and development that will build and enhance a livable East Liberty for everyone in our community. We intend to win a better East Liberty for everyone, and to help set a new standard self-determination for our communities.

Please join us, and let us know how we can support and promote your voice too. For membership information, please complete the form here.

For more information, including media, please contact us at enright.park@gmail.com.